By the late 1960s, Assonitis began producing films himself with the
documentary The Labyrinth of Sex and the
giallo thriller Who Saw Her Die? which was released at the height of the
giallo genre. The same year as
Who Saw Her Die?, Assonitis released one of his early successes,
Man from the Deep River. The film and its title were mainly inspired by
A Man Called Horse, which also featured a white man who is incorporated into a tribe that originally held him captive. The film is the first of the subgenre of Italian Cannibal movies that were made in the late 70s and early 80s The following year, Assonitis produced
The Last Snows of Spring. The film obtained a great commercial success, particularly in the
United Kingdom and launched the career of child actor
Renato Cestiè. Assonitis then tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase the screen rights to
William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. it was a huge commercial success in the United States, where it earned $15 million at the US box office and grossing in excess of $40 million world-wide.
Warner Bros. promptly filed a lawsuit, claiming copyright infringement due to similarities to
The Exorcist. and co-written by Assonitis' wife, Sonia Molteni, based on her original idea. Assonitis' sophomore directing effort came after the tremendous box office success of
Jaws, when he and
American International Pictures produced
Tentacles. The film included a star-studded cast including
John Huston,
Shelley Winters,
Bo Hopkins and
Henry Fonda. The film grossed $3,000,000 on a budget of just $750,000. In 1979, Assonitis produced
The Visitor. The film was directed by
Giulio Paradisi and featured another all-star cast, including
John Huston,
Shelley Winters,
Mel Ferrer,
Glenn Ford and
Sam Peckinpah with a cameo appearance by
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and an uncredited
Franco Nero in the prologue. The film was originally a more straightforward story with a script by Lou Comici, where a child in Atlanta is possessed by a demon and a visiting exorcist from Poland is required to free the child. However, Paradisi rewrote the script to include more
science fiction elements to avoid any associations with
The Exorcist. The film was a commercial success in Europe upon release, but US distributor
American International Pictures chose to recut the film, removing all of
Franco Nero's speaking scenes and rearrange the order of some scenes, and the film was not a success. However, in 2013, independent distributor
Drafthouse Films acquired the film. and re-released the remastered European cut in the United States. In the years since, the film has undergone a critical re-evaluation and now holds an approval rating of 78%, based on 18 reviews, and an average rating of 6.4/10 on review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes. On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews". Assonitis returned to directing in 1981 with
Madhouse, but the film featured unknown actors and found itself alongside Assonitis' 1972 film,
Man from the Deep River, on the infamous
video nasty list, a list of horror and
exploitation films banned in the United Kingdom by the
BBFC in the 1980s for violence and obscenity and as a result, the film never saw a theatrical release in the United Kingdom. The same year, Assonitis was brought in by
Warner Bros. to executive produce
Piranha II: The Spawning, replacing Jeff Schechtman. Miller Drake, who had been hired by Schechtman to co-write the film with
Charles H. Eglee and to direct the film, however Assonitis removed Miller from the project and hired
Rob Bottin to direct. Bottin had already been hired to do the special effects of the film, but soon left to work on
The Thing.
James Cameron was then hired and rewrote the script with Eglee and Assonitis under the pseudonym H.A Milton. After the first week of shooting, the set harmony was disturbed by some discussions about the work between the director and the producers (Assonitis, asked to verify the day-to-day activities, arguing with most of Cameron's choices), so while Cameron was only responsible for the shooting, most of the decisions were under Assonitis' authority. The film was released through Saturn International Pictures domestically and by
Columbia Pictures internationally and was a
box office bomb. Assonitis continued to produce throughout the 1980s with the films,
Choke Canyon, an action film starring
Stephen Collins,
Janet Julian,
Bo Svenson and
Lance Henriksen about a scientist trying to develop an alternative energy source while being pursued by an evil corporation; and the
Miles O'Keeffe sword and sorcery film
Iron Warrior distributed by
Orion Pictures. ==Trans World Entertainment==